


You Won't Catch Me Around Here

by S J Hartsfield (abbykate)



Series: Hide and Seek [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: John is one sad sod, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, pre-slash I think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykate/pseuds/S%20J%20Hartsfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock would feel him, feel that inexorable draw between them, the same strange pull he felt at St. Bart’s a lifetime ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Won't Catch Me Around Here

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the scheme: Jill decided that she, abbykate, and S.J. Hartsfield should all take lines from Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" and use them as titles for drabbles. They each picked five. They will be posted as a series, in the order in which they fall in the song.

The first time he sees John chase down a pale, tall man with dark curls and a long coat, it shivers something beneath his breastbone.  Not his heart – he knows that a murmur like that isn’t really possible.  But still, something there blossoms and spreads like blood on pavement.  He notices it.  Tells himself he doesn’t.

The second time it happens (the second time he _sees_ it happen – impossible to know how many occurrences there have been in the interim), John doesn’t run.  He only stares, and that’s worse, because his eyes are big and somehow empty, and he pulls his coat around him with a shudder and goes on.  Sherlock feels spidery-cold fingers in his chest again.

The third time, John nearly speaks to the man.  His voice dies in his throat though, and when Sherlock anticipates what he now knows is sorrow, he braces himself against it and it never comes.  Instead he feels _angry_ , because he’s not twenty paces from John, real and live and whole and how can John not _feel_ him there?  Yes, his hair is shorter now, coloured light and he wears glasses and a white gilet because the simplest disguises are also the best, but it shouldn’t matter what he _looks_ like, not to John.

Should it? 

If John changed his appearance – if he shaved his head or grew a mustache or lost an eye or dyed his skin magenta or some ghastly combination of all these things – Sherlock would know him.  He’d know him anywhere.  Of course he would, surely he would.  Because the way he looked would be irrelevant; Sherlock would feel him, feel that inexorable draw between them, the same strange pull he felt at St. Bart’s a lifetime ago.  Some invisible thread, winding tight in his chest until he and John are pressed together, bound together, wrapped up like some sort of mad, wicked gift on display for the universe’s reference.  Exhibit A:  Perfection.

But John doesn’t see him.  He looks right past him, sometimes, and Sherlock realizes one day that against all logic and rationality, he’s _hurt_ by it.  John’s lack of attention is a barb, something felt physically. 

So when John turns and goes on his miserable way, Sherlock does the same.


End file.
